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Jiang Cheng was not the most effervescent of people. Nor, indeed, was he the brightest, or the most beautiful. His character lacked a certain key elegance that most other high-profile cultivators had had ingrained into them since their youngest years – most attributed his lack of such an ability to a relenting mother, though anyone who knew her understood Madame Yu had been a mother anything but.
When Jiang Cheng was angry, people knew it. His thin, dark brows folded, forming a swooping valley between them, and his tone clipped sharper than the sound of a fan snapping shut. The very heels of his shoes clicked the floor more harshly, if that were possible, as though every step was a punishment.
Well, Jiang Cheng was angry most days. There weren’t many other feelings he seemed to experience, nothing left to describe him – though through this constant irritation he was always a just and honest sect leader. Only those who knew him before – a good few decades before, now – could remember a very different Jiang Cheng than the one praised up and down for his skill and prowess.
Nie Huaisang knew him before.
One really oughtn’t judge the Jiang Cheng of now without understanding the truth of his past – that was what Huaisang thought. No, not the tragedy of his parents, nor his sister or brother. Those things had shaped Jiang Cheng indeed, but most tended to utilize the incidences for the purpose of painting Jiang Cheng as a sympathetic figure, one who struggled on despite unrelenting grief and pain.
Huaisang believed, in the most honest – and therefore, smallest and weakest – part of his heart, that these events were something to be almost grateful for, because without that perfect family tying him down, Jiang Cheng had finally been allowed to blossom.
Huaisang had never been an admirer of Jiang Fengmian. He found his principles hypocritical, his conviction lacking. Jiang Yanli was a fine woman, and Wei Wuxian his own dear friend, but they were tiringly upright. They didn’t understand Jiang Cheng.
This wasn’t to say any of them should have died. Huaisang wasn’t a lunatic, despite what some might claim (but could not, as they were all rather decisively dead). He did indeed mourn them all for Jiang Cheng’s sake, in his own way, as they fell one by one.
But the Jiang Cheng that had risen from the ashes of their descent was a glorious creation, and Huaisang did not deny a little satisfaction at that, despite what had needed to happen for this to come about.
He had, of course, seen this potential in his friend since they were mucking about the Cloud Recesses at fifteen. While Wei Wuxian was off galivanting around Gusu and preening in front of the noble Lan Wangji every chance he got, Huaisang had observed the person always picking up the pieces left behind.
Huaisang was one of those aforementioned high-class cultivators bestowed with the power of maintaining an endlessly stoic expression when the time came for it – it was the single skill his older brother had left for him. Underneath that fluttering gossamer veil of propriety, there was nothing in the world he enjoyed to do more than sit back and gaze upon Jiang Cheng, who would sooner light such a veil on fire than join Huaisang behind it.
Jiang Cheng, outspoken, selfish, entirely hotheaded. A lover as much as he was a fighter, someone who incessantly did his best, regardless of it meaning hardly a coin to those around him.
The antithesis of everything Huaisang was and believed – how could he not fall in love with him so?
That was the conclusion Huaisang had come to after a mortifying number of years spent puzzling and panicking over his feelings. The fact that Jiang Cheng was, well, not a girl – he could accept that fairly easily. Women had never interested him, especially not in the context of marriage.
But to fall for someone so…different. That was where his tangled thoughts found the source of their anxiety. Jiang Cheng was set to inherit his entire sect, born to carry the weight of the Jiang family’s great legacy – he was a prudish, upright bastard who spent all his time griping about his brother or practicing desperately to overcome said brother. In all respects, Huaisang should have found him to be the most boring, stereotypical of people.
And yet, he loved him. Huaisang loved Jiang Cheng so much, he often didn’t know what to do with himself. His feelings were vast like the sky and swelled deeper than the sea – at least, he’d certainly written them as such on moonlit nights when he was so overwhelmed he had to pour the contents of his heart onto paper just to find an inkling of relief. For Huaisang, who had never coveted anything besides material possessions, to find himself so deeply infatuated with another human being was terrifying, humiliating, and fascinating all at once.
There was nothing to be done about his feelings, of course. Some kind of confession would surely not go over well – as indulgent as Jiang Cheng was with the sniveling Sect Leader Nie, Huaisang couldn’t imagine he would go so far as to allow anything further than the clear boundaries of their codependent comradery.
And that was for Sect Leader Nie Huaisang. A role Huaisang had spent far more time cultivating than he had his own golden core, a spider’s web he’d been weaving since the moment his brother died in that curiously coincidental incident.
The world of cultivation was one seething with spite and betrayal, and was where Huaisang thrived, steeped in such cruelty his whole life. He knew his limitations – his pathetic aversion to combat, his shallow adoration of all things artisanal. He was small, and weak, and jaded to the very core.
Even if Jiang Cheng allowed Huaisang’s preening persona to stay by his side, as a friend or as a lover, there was no chance in heaven or earth that he would stand for the ugly truth.
Huaisang had learned to be content behind the façade, and if wearing this mask forever was the price he had to pay to remain in Jiang Cheng’s good favor, he was more than willing to do so for the rest of his endless life.
So he preened and he simpered and he smiled just the way Jiang Cheng could stand, and he enjoyed himself as best he could through all of it. Any time spent with Jiang Cheng was precious, Huaisang told himself, and he wouldn’t dare ponder the possibility of anything more honest between them.
Huaisang liked to prepare. He was an organized man by nature – something that had come in all too handy when preparing the demise of his brother’s murderer – and he privately believed the likelihood of anything taking him by surprise, especially in recent years, was altogether slim to none.
Which is why it shocked Huaisang so viscerally, one dusky evening, to hear Jiang Cheng respond to his usual complaining on matters of state with, “Oh, I think we both know you’ve already sorted the answer to your problem, Sect Leader, you just wanted an excuse to come see me.”
They occupied one of the gazebos suspended above the flowering lakes Lotus Pier was so famous for, their view framed by a dying sun. In the pause between them, only the rustling of lotus petals could be heard.
The gears of Huaisang’s mind were spinning impossibly quick, a ringing pervading his thoughts and shattering every possible response he came up with.
“I don’t mind. You coming to see me, that is,” Jiang Cheng continued – while still as coarse as ever, his voice held none of its usual sneer.
“How merciful of you,” Huaisang snapped, only half-listening, still caught up in the whirlwind inside his head – he realized what he’d done half a second too late and felt his gaze jerk towards Jiang Cheng in a new wave of panic. Only one person in the world had he never used such a tone with, and the thought of his reaction towards it was ridiculously frightening.
By some miracle, however, it seemed Jiang Cheng hadn’t noticed the harsh quality to Huaisang’s words. Instead of looking insulted he seemed…
“Why… are you smiling?” Huaisang faltered, almost alarmed at the sight of Jiang Cheng’s thin, persistently crinkled lips held in such a fine curve upwards. He noted with a flood of relief that his own voice had gone back to its usual tenor once again.
Jiang Cheng twisted his mouth downwards and shrugged by way of response.
They stood against the ornate wooden railing of the gazebo, facing out and towards the vast spread of pink flowers just about to bloom. Standing with his hands linked nobly behind his back, now Jiang Cheng unclasped them and leaned his forearms on the banister slightly. He had yet to meet Huaisang’s gaze.
“You think I don’t know, don’t you?” He returned at last. His marble skin seemed to nearly glow in the fast-fading twilight. “About Jin Guangyao’s death. About all your plotting and scheming and the mind you keep hidden under that crown of mundanity.”
Fireflies began to illuminate the crystalline surface of the lake. Huaisang tried to keep his eyes on one at a time, desperate to steady the pummeling of his heart.
“Do you really think me so foolish, Huaisang?”
The sound of his name on those lips send a shudder through Huaisang and now he had to reach out and flick open his fan to shield his face because try as he might to resist it, there was an insistent, prickling flush creeping upwards from the collar of his robes and across his normally-pallid cheeks.
“I don’t think you’re foolish,” he managed, pushing away from the edge of the gazebo and back towards the center, keeping his face hidden, “I…I just…”
Huaisang took one more distancing step, and then he felt Jiang Cheng’s hand close over his.
The beating of his heart was becoming nearly unbearable.
“You just…?” Jiang Cheng urged – his voice was so soft. Why is his voice so soft?
Biting his lips desperately, Huaisang choked out, “Please don’t make me say it, Jiang Cheng.”
“Sorry, I’m just not that kind,” said Jiang Cheng, though the hand on Huaisang’s was as gentle as moonlight.
Slowly, achingly slowly, Huaisang turned back to face him, lowering his fan just enough to meet Jiang Cheng’s gaze. His heart trilled at the sight of him and once his eyes met Jiang Cheng’s – the color of coal and soot and dozens of painful memories – Huaisang wondered feverishly if he would ever be able to look away again.
“Well?” Jiang Cheng asked again. He tugged once on Huaisang’s arm and Huaisang fell forward a step, feeling himself almost begin to tremble at the sudden closeness.
And all at once, for the first time in a very long while, he felt sickened by his own cowardice. He was not some shaking maiden, a damsel to be overtaken by her sparkling knight. If Jiang Cheng already knew it was all an act, might as well give him a showstopping finale.
So Huaisang dropped his fan to the ground and used the moment where Jiang Cheng’s eyes followed its fall to tug his wrist free in one swift movement. And then, he took both hands and twined them around Jiang Cheng’s neck, pulling their bodies flush together in the middle of the gazebo. When Jiang Cheng blinked back down at him in surprise, he smiled – his real smile, something caught halfway between a smirk and a grimace.
“I love you, Sect Leader Jiang,” he whispered and his voice was frozen and thin. “I’ve loved you since the moment I laid eyes on you. The way you followed Wei Wuxian so desperately, never as talented, never as good – that’s what you thought of yourself, and that’s what everyone else thought of you too.”
He leaned in oh-so-close, past Jiang Cheng’s gaze, lips just a hair’s breadth from Jiang Cheng’s right ear, and breathed, “But I never thought so. I’ve always found you far superior to anyone else, the best of the Jiang family. I’ve done everything I could to linger by your side, Jiang Cheng, to keep you from knowing me and hating me because of it. You, above all, are the reason for whatever goodness I’ve retained within myself for all these years – without you, I might’ve turned into the next Wen Ruohan, the next Jin Guangyao, perhaps.”
Standing on just his tiptoes, Huaisang tilted his head and laid his cheek on Jiang Cheng’s shoulder, eyes half-closed, hands slipping to skim up and down the creases of Jiang Cheng’s violet-silk-clad arms.
“But I didn’t, just for you. Only for you. It’s always been you.”
That should do it, Huaisang thought with a crashing sense of finality. He’ll surely push me off, banish me from his presence. Who knows, maybe he’ll even publicly denounce my name?
This confession was simply a ploy, a con. While each word was truer than the last, the flair and dramatic touch were designed to disgust Jiang Cheng so entirely that he would never be able to lay eyes on Huaisang again, if he knew what was good for him.
“Well, you didn’t need to say it like that,” came the dry remark from a few centimeters above.
Huaisang felt his resolve slipping and moved to release Jiang Cheng – that was, of course, when his friend returned the embrace at last, coiling his arms around Huaisang’s waist and locking his fingers tight together so that, no matter how shamelessly Huaisang wriggled, he could not break free.
Huaisang didn’t dare look up – he hardly even dared breathe. Instead, he stared at Jiang Cheng’s high collar and the cool white throat encaged within, trying to imagine what it would look like absolutely ravished with pulsing pink love bites.
“I’m not going to bite, you know,” Jiang Cheng said.
I wish you would, came the thought unbidden in Huaisang’s mind.
“Ah. That is, unless you want me to.”
Huaisang blinked.
It was the kind of thing he’d never imagined Jiang Cheng saying – not to anyone, even besides him – but, rolling off of Jiang Cheng’s gruff tongue the way it did, Huaisang couldn’t help but chuckle, despite everything that had taken place and was still taking place.
“Jiang Cheng, you really—” he tried, but as soon as he heard his own voice, the chuckle became a whole laugh that peeling out into the night sky, waving hello to the moon that was just beginning to crest over the horizon.
Bringing a hand to his mouth as he at last began to settle once more, all his nerves dissipating along with the last ringings of laughter, Huaisang met Jiang Cheng’s eyes at last, and in those black pools swam impossible warmth, a kind of warmth Huaisang had never known.
He steeled himself and opened his mouth to ask, but Jiang Cheng beat him to it and said, with an outrageous flush beginning to overtake his cheeks, “I love you too, by the way.”
Huaisang, for all his love of music and poetry, couldn’t even begin to describe what hearing those words sounded like.
“I’m not going to get all sappy, but…I do. I love you.”
Like the finest sweets imported from a distant land, concoctions of flavors unfamiliar and yet intoxicating all at once?
“I…you. It’s always been me and you, left behind while my brother went off to do god knows what with god knows who. And I’ve known how you see me for a long time, I’m not blind, and one thing led to another and. Well.”
Like the first dip into cool waters on the hottest day of the year, gloriously refreshing and impossible to recreate?
“I figured out who you are behind that mask a long time ago, by the way. I’ve seen the way you talk to everyone but me – you’re not that hard to read, you know.”
No. No, indeed – there was no prose or poetry that could explain this.
“Huaisang.”
Huaisang smiled and refocused. He tilted his chin and gazed up through his lashes, knowing exactly how he looked and just what it would do to the man wrapped around him.
Jiang Cheng’s brows furrowed in a grimace, only this time it seemed to be one of self-restraint, and such an expression pleased Huaisang to no end.
“Yes, A-Cheng?” Huaisang grinned, letting his own face fall into an appearance much more similar to how he was really feeling.
Jiang Cheng rolled his eyes and then, curtly, “Maybe you’re scared of letting me know you fully. I understand that, but know this, idiot – there has also never been anyone whose opinion I’ve cared for more than I do yours, not since my father and mother passed. You have never pitied me, nor doubted my ability, and that trust in me has never been a lie, yes?”
Huaisang nodded once.
Jiang Cheng was still frowning, of course, but one side of his mouth curled into a steep, mountain peak smile that sent a Huaisang’s heart into fragments.
“I fell in love with the you who treated me as such, so don’t worry about me disappearing from your sight just because of who you really are, got it?”
Huaisang kissed him then, for there was really nothing more to say.